Worked me some wood

As I mentioned in a previous post, the toolworks has been shut down for a couple of weeks now. This is a nice break, as it allows me to catch up on a LOT of things that have been pushed aside for the last year or so. One of those, for instance, is updating this blog (lucky, lucky you, dear reader). Another one is that I finally managed to squeeze in some time for my first love – bona fide furnituremaking. Specifically, I finally managed to finish a piece that I designed and started work on almost a year ago, and which has been at the top of my ‘yeah – I’ll get right on that’ list ever since.

The backstory is that last year about this time, my friend (and moulding planemaker extraordinaire) Matt Bickford and I decided to share a booth at the Northeast Woodworker’s Association show in Saratoga Springs. He also mentioned that his friends Don and Chris Boule had issued a challenge to him to build a piece for the show. When he told me this, I immediately jumped at the excuse to make some furniture.

To make a long story short, Matt decided to make a Queen Anne table, and I decided to work out a small cabinet with kumiko pattern sliding doors. We were both really excited and pleased at the prospect of stealing some time away from toolmaking to get back to building a little furniture. Ahh, the folly of youth.

Three months later, when we arrived at the show, Matt had finished something like two of the legs for his table, and I had finished one of the two doors for my cabinet. Here are some links to the absolutely stunning (and fully completed) pieces that Don Boule and Chris Boule brought.

So yes – it was a slightly extended build. But I do take consolation from having actually finished it in (just barely) under a year. So I got that going for me. As for Matt’s table… well, you’ll have to ask him about that.

As a side note – for those of you interested in this sort of decorative kumiko work, I cannot recommend Des King’s outstanding website highly enough. Des trained in traditional methods for shoji and kumiko in Japan and has since returned to his native Australia and set up shop. His website is an amazing source of information and inspiration, and provides a unique English-language picture of just how intricate and beautiful this sort of work can be.

Comments

@Tico Vogt
Thanks Tico. The wood is black walnut, and in this case I broke my ”rule and bought it kiln-dried (and steamed). I wanted the doors and form to be the focal points, so the more washed-out look of steamed walnut seemed to make sense. In hindsight, though, I just wasn’t at all happy with the color of it. The finish is very light brush coat of buttonlac over amber shellac, which made the color much more pleasing to me. The Warabi pulls are from Hida Tools, and as far as I know they’re the only handforged iron tansu pulls available in the states.

The outside of the legs does flare a bit. Its a really subtle curve – IIRC I ended up with a 3/8″ difference top to bottom. Most of the flare is in the bottom 12″ or so. The sliding doors are set in loose grooves top and bottom. Seth Janofsky has a good FWW article on how to do this really well. Maybe five or ten years back.

For the Kumiko work, do you own and use all of the traditional tools that King uses, or do you have other methods? Seems like a huge investment in learning…sort of like all Japanese crafts seem to require…that takes a lifetime to master. Even those eighty year old chisel makers say they have just gotten to the point of being “passable”. Maybe that’s hyperbole and that famous Japanese humility at work, but still, there does seem to be the pervasive idea that there are only a few masters who make it all the way to the end of the journey of apprentice to journeyman to master. What are your thoughts on this having completed a Kumiko project yourself? Is this your first? Last?

Oops. Scratch that last post. Duh. Reminder to self…check the rest of the blog before you speak so you don’t sound like an ignoramous. Still, I’d like to hear your thoughts on the King’s traditional methods.

Ignoramus seems over-harsh. I’m not generally the sort who believes the world is waiting impatiently for my every word. Though I do appreciate that you thought enough of the post to look back through prior stuff on the blog.

As to your question – I’ve been doing shoji and kumiko work off and on for a few years. If you’re interested in this sort of work, I highly recommend Toshio Odate’s making shoji book. I made a couple of simple screens using the methods in the book first, then worked out the ranma he has in the book. What he does not go into, though, is the diamond pattern kumiko, which I tried to spell out as clearly as I could in my previous posts.

In general, I don’t really think kumiko work requires much (if any) tooling beyond a fairly basic set of hand tools. The one set of tools Des uses that I do not have is a set of dedicated planes for cutting the angles on small kumiko pieces – he details these on his site under ‘tools’. I use shooting fixtures and a mitre plane to get the precision required for those pieces. I think that the dedicated planes are surely a lot faster, but while I’d quite like a set I’m not doing enough of this sort of work to spend the money for them (it’s a fairly significant cost).

What is necessary is a precise crosscut saw – I much prefer japanese saws for this, as my western saws are generally not thin-plated enough for these cuts. I do imagine a zona saw might work quite well, and Gramercy makes some very nice little jeweler’s saws as well. The other necessity is a way to thickness wood very precisely, but there are any number of ways to make such a setup very inexpensively. I made a kanna specifically for this, but you could easily make a board with tracks to hold a good western plane at a fixed height for this purpose as well. There are a few very helpful jigs needed for the precision aspects, but again these are quite easy to make, and very inexpensive.

Between Odate’s book, the information on King’s site, and the details on the 3-way joint I posted on a couple of years ago, I really think anyone can work out these projects. It is very detailed work, and requires some commitment and patience, but there is no magic or superman skills required to get good results.

As for mastery – I do think the definition of mastery in Japan seems to be a higher bar than we might consider it here. But as with most things, I think that a devoted amateur can approach similar quality of work with sufficient effort. What the master can achieve that cannot be matched by others, though, is the effortlessness and speed. To do this sort of work at a production pace would require a level of experience that I don’t anticipate ever having.

Apologies – this comment is as long as some of my blog entries – but I thought your question deserved some relatively complete responses. And if you should ever have additional questions, I am always happy to answer emails or phone calls from anyone with questions about any of the work I do.

@raney
Thanks so much for that great response, Raney. Repeat after me…”there is no such thing as too long or too much information!” I will certainly be checking out the book. I absolutely adore the cabinet BTW. I forgot to mention that!